The biggest threat to your business growth? Communication.

Your business might be doing everything ‘right’ — great strategy, great product, strong metrics — and still stall. The number one threat isn’t competition, costs, or tech. It’s the way people struggle to communicate, collaborate, and get on the same page.

Underestimate the significance and impact of this at your peril!

Start-ups, scale-ups, decades old established businesses, global retail brands you name it - they suffer from it.

Your ability to communicate with others will account for fully 85% of your success in your business and in your life. Brian Tracy - Best selling author

Often, when starting a business or forming a new team we seek out people we know to join us. Our underlying assumption is that because these are people we know, have maybe worked with before, or they do similar stuff to us that when we come together to collaborate on something new and exciting the drive, motivation, speed, quality will match ours.

Alternatively, when joining a new organisation or team of unfamiliar faces we may assume we'll quickly fit in with our new colleagues. However, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out how our new peers work. Most likely this will be different to our own.

Whilst there’s a tonne of evidence that cognitive diversity is a positive thing, when colleagues act and communicate in a way at odds with what you hope for it's difficult, awkward and slow to navigate through. Not being able to find common ground has a negative effect, reducing motivation and employee engagement.

Common symptoms include:

• Slow decision making - difference of opinion or a lack of understanding (and not articulating it, or accept other ideas without judgement) causes unnecessary delays

• Conflicting priorities / difference in urgency - some are keen to get work done immediately, others think it should wait

• Quality vs speed - having to choose between taking time to improve the quality of work vs. a focus on getting something out the door to test and get early feedback

When considering the different working styles that exist in your team or organisation, there are loads of different models designed to help us understand ourselves and each other by putting us in boxes and giving us labels.

But in reality humans act based on a combination of our established patterns of behaviours, the situation at hand, and our relationship with the other person.

All models are wrong, but some are useful. George Box - British statistician 1919 - 2013

Here's three practical tips to fix it:

Tip 1 - Build self-awareness

• What’s the one thing you struggle to communicate clearly?

• Where do others tell you they misunderstand you most?

Doing some honest personal reflection, accepting what you find and then being vulnerable and sharing this - that's leadership. The personal user manual is our go-to tool to help you understand and articulate this.

How does it help? - Increasing empathy and compassion for one another at a neurological level. Encouraging more open conversations. Showing a willingness to be pro-active and move things towards something better.

How to do it? - Find (or create) a template you like. Fill it in. Share it with your team (in a forum where you can talk through it). Ask "Who's gonna share theirs next?". We originally discovered this idea here.

Tip 2 - Create alignment

Take a step back from the day to day grind to create a shared understanding of why you've come together, how you want to work and what you have / need to enable that.

A simple team charter is something we've used with 5 people scrum teams all the way to 18 people senior leadership teams. This has a huge impact, and becomes a catalyst for positive change.

How does it help?

When there's a clash of communication styles, personality types or general misalignment this allows you to hit the pause button. To stop focussing on individual differences. To reflect on why you're all there in the first place. This tool's super power is the alignment it creates as a result of an open conversation about what's collectively wanted and needed. It changes the conversation from "I don't like what you said or how you said it" to "Does this help us achieve our purpose" or "Is this conversation in line with our values?"

How to do it?

Find (or create) a template you like. Organise a team workshop to co-populate this. Publish it somewhere where everyone can see it. Review it every so often (especially when someone new joins the team).

Tip 3 - Foster mutual growth

Shifting the attention towards continuous improvement and growth quickly changes the dynamic of relationships. To find out team members skills and what new ones they seek is easily done through the Market place of skills format.

How does it help?

It moves people away from what they disagree on, towards what they can learn from each other and how they can support their collective development.

How to do it?

There's a very clear explanation in this video by our buddy Carsten Lutzen.

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These 3 tips are not only powerful, but easy to implement with very little pre-work.

If you want your business to grow, start with how you talk, connect, and align. Pick one of these three and do it this week - you’ll see the difference in how people show up.

If you've already tried these type of activities and problems still persist, of if you want to fast track this for your company then please get in touch.

Pace and purpose create cross-functional alignment - connecting strategy, leaders, product teams, and delivery around shared outcomes.